Are journalism and advocacy compatible?

            Advocacy journalism is journalism in which a position is openly taken in news coverage and the writer or the publication states a subjective view or promotes a certain cause. “News reports are intended to be objective and unbiased. In contrast, advocacy journalists have an opinion about the story they are writing” (Wikipedia).

            To examine the ethics of mainstream journalism versus advocacy journalism, we have to deal with ethical dilemmas. On the one hand, we discuss about journalism independence and objectivity, and on the other hand, we analyze participation, advocacy, and activism. Based on independence as an ethical and moral guiding principle, a journalist has the responsibility to gather information and to report it to the public as truthfully as possible. But the advocates of public journalism argue that journalism should be more attached to the communities they cover and should work together with the public to accomplish better service and democratic goals.

            Another kind of analyzing shows that a journalist or a news organization may play different roles under specific circumstances. While a journalist can be a good reporter and watch dog, his or her organization can move from traditional standards of objectivity to a position of advocacy. Per Roy Peter Clark (1994), a Poynter Institute senior scholar, “public journalism asks us, on occasion, to step across the traditional line of journalistic independence—to go across the line that takes us from observers and reporters to convenors and builders.”   But, do always media organizations involved in public journalism provide help related to issues of public education, health care, criminal justice, by encouraging citizens’ participation?

            Advocacy journalism is problem-solving, activist-oriented journalism; it is journalism of action, as William Randolph Hearst, who was the owner of the New York Journal, named it. According to Hearst, a journalist of action is “an active participant in solving crime, offering charity, influencing foreign policy and thwarting what it deemed abuses of municipal government.”  I would say that a current example of a journalist of action in solving crime is Peter R. de Vries, a Dutch crime reporter, who claimed that he has solved the case of Natalee Holloway, who mysteriously disappeared in May, 2005, in Aruba. 

            There are ethical questions of objectivity and advocacy. Among them are: Is advocacy journalism good or bad? Should a journalist declare his or her bias? Should reporters cover their ethnic or racial groups? While mainstream media have biases which are most of the time hidden, advocacy journalism has a declared bias, which is publicly acknowledged. As long as the bias is acknowledged up front, and reporters let their editors know about their biases, they can cover stories fairly and in a professional manner.  I think that the integrity and the credibility of the journalist are more important than his or her bias, and that mainstream journalism can learn from advocacy journalism and vice versa.